Donâ€™t Fall For Facebook Profile Scam

Despite scammers' claim you can't see who has accessed your profile

Mark Huffman has been a consumer news reporter for ConsumerAffairs since 2004. He covers real estate, gas prices and the economy and has reported extensively on negative-option sales. He was previously an Associated Press reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., a correspondent for Westwoood One Radio Networks and Marketwatch.
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Most people are curious about who might be curious about
them. So when they log onto their Facebook account and see a new tool that will
reveal who has accessed their profile, it might be tempting to click on it.

Big mistake.

Graham Cluley, security expert for Sophos software, says
scammers are once again using Facebook as a lure for new victims.

"Right
now we're seeing messages spreading across Facebook claiming to have found a
way to allow you to sneakily tell who has been looking at your profile," Cluley
writes in his blog. "And it's no shock to see that many people are intrigued as
to who might be checking them out online."

However, Cluley points out that this is not new legitimate
functionality that Facebook has built into its social network. Instead, if you
click on the link you are taken to a third-party website which, to the
untrained eye, may at first glance appear to still be on the real Facebook
site, but is in fact designed to trick you into sharing their link further.

A
typical message reads:

See who viewed your profile original version
2.0:now you can see who viewed your facebook profile<LINK>

"As
we've seen in the past in connection with other scams, the page encourages you
to 'like' it and 'share' it numerous times before it will hand over the ability
to see who has viewed your Facebook profile," Cluley warns. "This should,
frankly, be enough to trigger your suspicions and have you rapidly retreating."

Cluley
says so far, many Facebook users appear to be falling for the ruse. In doing
so, he says, they are helping scammers spread their links across the Internet.

"Ultimately
you have to have your wits about you to avoid scams like this," he said.

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